Yesterday San Jose Mercury News printed a story about how Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask are going to “limit” the personally identifiable information (PII) they collect online.
It’s rather sad that what they view as improved privacy practices still have a very long way to go. Why is storing search query information for any period beyond the time of the actual query necessary? It *should* only be stored on the site user’s own computer at their discretion. Yes, yes…I know *WHY* the search giants are saving the query information, and all under the guise of improved customer experience.
One action that sounds interesting is Ask.com’s new “AskEraser” feature “available by the end of the year. Reportedly by activating this feature Ask.com will not store any query information at the instigation of the enduser. This will be really fun to test once the feature is available…if it ever appears.
“Microsoft said it would also join the Network Advertising Initiative.”
Find out more about the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) here.
The list of organizations that comply with the NAI is currently quite small. Wonder if Microsoft joining the initiative will boost the numbers of organizations participating?
Tags: Ask.com, awareness and training, data mining, FTC, Information Security, IT compliance, Microsoft, NAI, Network Advertising Initiative, PII, policies and procedures, privacy, risk, Yahoo